‘We need this, today’ : King extolled in Morristown, as Trump is inaugurated in DC

By Michael Lovito

The 55th annual Martin Luther King Observance Committee Interfaith Breakfast and Commemoration was a bipartisan affair on Monday.

Among the 300 or so attendees at the Morristown Hyatt Regency were Morristown’s Democratic Mayor Tim Dougherty and Council President Nathan Umbriac and Republican state Sen. Anthony M. Bucco and Morris County Commission Director Tayfun Selen.

Still, some speakers alluded to the incongruity of commemorating the life of a slain civil rights champion on the same day that Donald Trump, who promised to “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” was inaugurated for his second term as president.

“We need this, today,” the Rev. Jerry Carter of Morristown’s Calvary Baptist Church said to applause. “Let me repeat: We need this, today. Those from Calvary know I like to repeat things three times: We need this, today.”

Two hours before Trump decried military diversity initiatives as “radical political theories and social experiments,” Armond Kinsey, chief talent and diversity officer of event co-sponsor Atlantic Health, called King and the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis “the first chief diversity officers.”

“We need to make sure that we’re going to the place of equality, despite what’s happening politically, despite what’s happening in these organizations who are getting rid of DEI programs and initiatives,” Kinsey said.

“If you do it the right way, it’s not a program or initiative. It’s just the way that companies do business.”

NO MLK SERVICE THIS YEAR

A friendly, hopeful tone permeated most of the morning, which raised more than $12,000 for scholarships and other education initiatives.

For the first time in memory, however, the MLK breakfast was not followed by a noontime service at Calvary.

The service had been listed online by Morris County government and in a graphic from the observance committee. Several people showed up at Calvary, despite sub-freezing temperatures and several inches of snow, only to find the church closed.

Responding Tuesday to a request for comment, committee Secretary Henry J. Lee said the decision to cancel the service was made in October, with an eye toward Inauguration Day.

“Some of our members were interested in going to D.C. if Kamala Harris were elected,” Lee said. He anticipates the service will return next year, and said he was not sure where Monday’s incorrect flier originated.

The Interfaith Breakfast was the first since 2020; COVID caused its cancellation in the intervening years, Lee said. Calvary held its noontime MLK service in 2023 and 2024; virtual services were presented in ’21 and ’22.

Monday’s breakfast program flowed like a service, with speeches on King’s legacy and the importance of the Committee’s work, punctuated by musical performances from Kamuela Nikki Tillman.

Paying tribute to King ally Mahalia Jackson, she sang three gospel selections. The event began and ended with room-wide renditions of Lift Every Voice and Sing and We Shall Overcome.

King was assassinated in 1968. Had he lived, he would have turned 96 last week. Trump said he will release classified information about the murders of King, Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy.

“TOUGH MIND AND TENDER HEART”

Bethel AME Pastor Sidney Williams Jr., the breakfast’s keynote speaker, called on attendees to have a “tough mind and tender heart” and to “work together with people of different political, social, economic, backgrounds, and completely different ideas” to build lasting progress.

To illustrate his point, Williams told the story of the late Ed Danbury, who came to Bethel after it and four other African American churches in Morristown and Morris Township were vandalized a few years ago.

Williams said he initially found Danbury’s presence “alarming” by virtue of his “red hat with white letters” and the large flag flying out of his pickup truck.

But Danbury, who said that he believed “the Lord had sent him to Bethel to be a blessing,” offered to pay for a new sign for the church and eventually contributed a new heater for Bethel’s sanctuary, as well as a school bus for the church’s soup kitchen.

“What I didn’t know was that his body was filled with cancer. What I didn’t know was that he had been divorced and couldn’t receive communion at his Catholic church,” Williams said of Danbury.

“But I did know that he had two sons, one married a Haitian, one married a Korean. So, he had brown grandbabies and was trying to reconcile his racist views on life, but needed to make work with God, and he felt like the right place to do that was at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.”

Williams said the bus donated by Danbury helped transform Bethel’s soup kitchen into a mobile food pantry that mobilized more than 2,000 volunteers during the COVID pandemic.

“An ordinary man making extraordinary sacrifices,” Williams said of Danbury, who passed away in 2020. “This act of kindness transcended political divides and demonstrated the power of service to unite us.”

Towards the end of his speech, Williams called on those in attendance to make sacrifices of their own.

“Here’s the question we’re asking you today: What role will you play in this fight towards justice? Are your ready to lead? Ready to serve? Ready to build the connections that serve our community?” Williams said.

“I want to invite you to continue to fight and reflect on where you fit in this journey.”

Kevin Coughlin contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with comments from a spokesperson for Morristown’s Martin Luther King Observance Committee.